Simplifying payment technology: Putting all eggs in one basket

In their first, exclusive module for PaymentEye, the experts from ONPEX explore how payments have changed — and what that means for all sides of the industry.

What it takes to make an online payment

Today, small shop owners can go global just as well as a retail chain. All they need is an internet connection. Thanks to global communications and logistics, it has become easier to reach consumers all over the world and to take advantage of our increasingly unified global culture. Unfortunately, this is not the whole story.

Even shops with a great, internationally viable product, advanced logistics and no administrative issues can — and do — get in trouble at the checkout. Why? Because they need to offer several payment methods to match the payment habits of each target country. In almost every country, providers offer methods suited to the population. But is connecting those two parties really all it takes to enable payments?

How to let them pay

In fact, there are a multitude of other topics that every player on the global payments market has to consider, too. Among them are finding the best technology to work with, preventing fraud, managing partners and customers, connecting cash flow and banking facilities, paying and invoicing suppliers as well as customers, and, for a truly efficient business, collecting data about all these processes in order to optimise every transaction that takes place.

Christoph Tutsch, founder and CEO of ONPEX, explains: “As the global marketplace becomes more interconnected, merchants can reach customers all across the globe. Improvements in logistics have already been made; now we need to removea number of stumbling blocks in global payments. Cost, time, security and efficiency are all impediments that harm the usability of payment types and methods across the globe.”

In a series of modules exclusively for PaymentEye, ONPEX explores the pitfalls of global payments and shares how they can be identified and addressed by payment providers and merchants alike.

Simplifying payment technology: Putting all eggs in one basket

From Rolodex to complex

Remember when businessmen carried their contacts in an address book or flipped through their Rolodex to find the right business card? Businesses do not operate like this today. They use advanced CRM systems and platforms that synchronise to the customers’ information.

A business used to have a single bank account, updated once a week, and payments were made by cheque. Today, the management of payment processes is more complex. There are suppliers and customers, bills and invoices, individual and recurring payments and fraud and taxes. In addition, the majority of companies nowadays do — or want to — operate on a global scale.

Jeff the flower exporter

Jeff (a fictitious businessman) grows flowers in Southern France and sells them to customers all over Europe via an online shop. He accepts card payments and also offers the option to pay via PayPal.

Since Jeff’s business is going so well, he decides to partner with a Dutch tulip producer to increase his customers’ options. By adding a partner, his business model becomes more complex — with a new wave of Dutch customers using his shop, he now wants to start accepting iDeal. With all these changes, he begins to worry that he might lose track of all financial transactions that he has to integrate with, supervise and manage for his new partner.

Ideally, all the administrative nightmares and cross-border challenges for Jeff and all other members of the payments industry would be solved with one solution. It should let them decide for themselves what kind of services they require at the beginning and which they want to add as they go.

Directory Service, APIs and User Interfaces (UI)

A flexible solution requires a directory service that operates as the central authorization entity, linking to all other functionalities. As the name indicates, it stores all directory information, just like an address book used to.

Business structures have changed, and solutions need to reflect these complex constructions. A payment solution has to reflect the structure of a business model. This requires a multi-level client tree structure, an advanced organisational feature that allows a company to fit the payment platform to its needs. With a solution that offers multi-tenant capabilities, a business can be divided into several entities. This makes a lot of sense if you are dealing with a business like Jeff’s, which manages partners in the background.

Companies comprise various departments, hierarchy levels and permissions; roles and rights of a payment solution need to be adjusted accordingly. Some rules might exist for legal reasons, while others could be to avoid administrative complications. Whatever the reason, the roles have to fit and adjust to specific needs and be allocated to the right people.

The key features of a modern solution should include:

Multi-tenant capability

Multi-level client hierarchies

Permissions, policies, product and contract management

White-label configuration

Agent and user management

Having all these features is great, yet a payment platform needs to be configured, managed and controlled. This requires a portal, also known as user interface (UI). In order to be adaptable, the application needs to be fully automated through server communication via modern APIs.

As people are more mobile and on-the-go, the portal needs to have excellent usability for all types of browser technologies. It needs to have a responsive design and self-explanatory workflows. Furthermore, the UI has to be configured and designed to match the client’s requirements and brand identity.

ONPEX has created these types of applications in order to bring simplicity, automation and transparency to the complex challenges faced by the payments industry. One of ONPEX’ partners, Dan Segev, CEO of The Flying Merchant, says that the ONPEX “technology is well designed. It has an elegant, user-friendly UI.”

Find out more about modern payment technology next week.

About ONPEX’ Payment Technology

ONPEX wants to make all payments truly accessible globally. To achieve this, the company will bring together all technical steps of payment processing, banking and regulatory requirements. The technological foundation of ONPEX’ solution is a cloud-based Platform as a Service (PaaS) that combines local and cross-border card processing, as well as international alternative payment methods, on one omni-channel platform.

The software consists of independent micro-services. With just the click of a mouse these can become modular-scaled to provide higher performance levels. In turn, the modules and functions can be combined to new solutions to meet any requirement in the payments industry.

About ONPEX

ONPEX is an award-winning, global, white-label cloud payment solution combining local and cross-border card processing and international alternative payment methods on one omni-channel Platform as a Service (PaaS). ONPEX’ solutions accelerate international expansion and the development of banks, PSPs, ISOs and developers. They offer the flexibility all of them need to grow globally in the payment business. ONPEX has connectivity to hundreds of acquirers, alternative payment methods and payment related solutions internationally and operates entities in Europe, North America and Asia. For more information about ONPEX, please visit www.onpex.com.

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